Geology in the News: Largely as a result of hydraulic fracturing technology, the U.S.A. is now the world's leading producer of natural gas. Largely as.

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Presentation on theme: "Geology in the News: Largely as a result of hydraulic fracturing technology, the U.S.A. is now the world's leading producer of natural gas. Largely as."— Presentation transcript:

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Geology in the News: Largely as a result of hydraulic fracturing technology, the U.S.A. is now the world's leading producer of natural gas. Largely as a result of hydraulic fracturing technology, the U.S.A. is now the world's leading producer of natural gas. Shell Oil has just reported major new production from the Utica Shale of upstate New York and adjacent Pennsylvania. Shell Oil has just reported major new production from the Utica Shale of upstate New York and adjacent Pennsylvania.

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ORIGINS (cont.)

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To recap from Friday: Nuclear Fusion is what generates the energy of stars Nuclear Fusion is what generates the energy of stars Minimum temperature for: 10 million - Hydrogen to fuse into helium: 10 million° Kelvin 100 million - 3 helium nuclei to fuse into carbon: 100 million° Kelvin 90% of all matter in the Universe consists of Hydrogen and Helium 90% of all matter in the Universe consists of Hydrogen and Helium Matter in the known Universe was originally quite uniformly distributed. Matter in the known Universe was originally quite uniformly distributed.

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Individual stars are created as large areas of gas within the nebula condense, if these gas pockets have sufficient mass (i.e., ~10x that of Jupiter).

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The nebulae continually collapse and commonly start rotating, to form galaxies, like the Andromeda Galaxy, pictured here. (Note the other galaxies also in the picture!) WE ARE HERE! ( Our own Milky Way Galaxy is a spiral galaxy ) Typical galaxies contain hundreds of millions to billions of stars.

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There are a LOT of galaxies out there! THIS is what the Hubble space telescope saw when aimed at an "empty" part of the sky – an area about the size of the head of a pin held at arm's length!

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our BUT our original star didn't last …. It exploded in what is called a SUPERNOVA SUPERNOVA.

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What is the evidence for this Supernova?

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The process of nuclear fusion can only generate elements as heavy as iron - with 26 protons and either 29 or 30 neutrons in the nucleus - within an active star's core.

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Iron But if we look at the period table, we see LOTS of elements that are heavier than iron!

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Supernova The Supernova is required to generate the pressures and temperatures to create these heavier elements!

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This supernova – the exploding star - created a vast cloud of debris, still with abundant hydrogen and helium, but also including many heavier elements derived from the star's demise.

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Debris coalescing within this gas cloud produced larger fragments of solids, that coalesced into small bodies called planetesimals…. …. that then further coalesced to form larger solid bodies - planets - rotating around a central star …. the Sun.

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Soooooo, ultimately we wind up with the solar system we call HOME. (Ever wonder why all the planets except for Pluto rotate in the same direction around the sun, in a flat plane?) All this is believed to have happened some time around five BILLION years ago. (Remember that the Big Bang was b.y.a., some 8-9 billion years earlier!)

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But by 3.8 billion years ago, we know we had primitive oceans. The "primordial soup" of the early oceans held a variety of strange and very primitive organisms, such as mats of algae that formed stromatolites like these in Australia > ">

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< billion-year-old stromatolites in South Africa 2.6-billion-year-old microfossils (of bacteria) from North America, on the north shore of Lake Superior >

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Rocks of this ancient crust also show clearly that they've been through a lot. This is a satellite image of ancient rocks in Australia - the image is ~ 200 km across! The light areas are granitic rocks, ancient mini- continental blocks, while the green belts are ancient volcanic rocks that were crushed in between.

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By this time, the Earth was also stratified into layers, with most of the heavier elements (particularly iron) being concentrated in the central core. (We had also lost most of our hydrogen and helium to space by this time….)